Donna Brazile Alleges DNC ‘Rigged’ the Primaries for Hillary Clinton

Former interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee Donna Brazile alleges in her forthcoming book that former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took control of the DNC months before she won the nomination.

Politico featured an excerpt from Brazile’s upcoming book “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House.” Brazile elaborates on the financial disarray within the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s influence.

“I had found my proof [of rigging] and it broke my heart,” wrote Brazile in an excerpt of her book published by Politico Magazine Thursday. The said rigging, according to Brazile, was discovered in an agreement and explained as follows:

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook [Clinton campaign manager] with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”

Brazile’s claims in the book that Clinton’s team signed a deal with the DNC to keep the party financially afloat—and in exchange— the Clinton campaign would control the DNC’s “finances, strategy and monies raised, which she says, “showed favoritism toward Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.”

The control was given in exchange for a joint fundraising pledge by the Clinton campaign that helped fund the DNC through the election year, Brazile says.

“This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity,” she wrote in a book scheduled for publication next week, a portion of which was excerpted Thursday in Politico.

“As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet,” Brazile wrote. “It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.”

Brazile asserts that an August 2015 agreement gave the Clinton campaign a measure of direct influence over the party’s finances and strategy, along with control over staff decisions and consultation rights over issues like mailings, budgets and analytics

Driving her point on how informed she was about the DNC finances, Brazile says that she was unaware of the DNC’s serious financial troubles when she assumed her position as interim chair.

Brazile claims that she was made aware of the financial troubles only after contacting Gary Gensler, the Clinton campaign’s chief financial officer, in July 2016. At the time, Gensler explained to Brazile that “the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.”

In another move that could be construed by some that issues were brewing with certain members in the DNC, Brazile criticized her predecessor as DNC chair, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

“Debbie was not a good manager,” Brazile wrote. “She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was.”

She continues…. “Schultz struck a deal with the Clinton campaign to establish financial stability within the DNC.” Brazile eluded to the “Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America,” which was signed by former CEO of the DNC Amy Dacey and Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook.

In this July 25, 2016 file photo, Donna Brazile, interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, appears on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Paul Sancya / AP)

In response to the Politico excerpt Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, (D-MA), said in a CNN interview that she believed the primary contest between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders had been rigged. “This is a real problem,” she said. “We have to hold this party accountable.”

Our Revolution President and DNC-critic Nina Turner released a fundraising email about the DNC, saying it was “rigged all along.” Sanders’s former campaign chair told CNN that the behavior was “egregious” and “undemocratic.”

Tom Perez said in an interview with CNBC, “One of my goals here, as DNC chair, is to make sure that the nominating process for 2020 is a process that’s fair and transparent for everybody,” “We’re going to set the primary debate schedule well in advance of when we know which candidates will be there.”

Charlie Baker, the chief operating officer of the Clinton campaign, said that in 2015 the campaign agreed to raise money for the parts of the DNC that were going to be most crucial to the general election, including data, research, communications and the like. The agreement also gave the Clinton campaign some say over personnel. If there was a vacancy for a position in one of these departments, the DNC had to consult the campaign on the three finalists but could make the final decision itself.

“We never tried to be presumptuous,” Baker said. “We were literally trying to make sure the DNC had the resources it needed, whoever was the nominee.”

The joint fundraising agreement allowed Clinton to raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual donors – money that was spread across state parties under federal campaign guidelines. Sanders had a different fundraising model, relying more on small-dollar donations directly to his campaign, and he told the DNC that his campaign was not interested in following the same program.

Throughout the campaign, the DNC and then-chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, fiercely denied any suggestion that the DNC showed preference for Clinton over other candidates.

The presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-VT), harshly criticized Wasserman Schultz for limiting the early primary debate schedule, seemingly disbursing money to Clinton for fundraising, and briefly cutting off Sanders’s access to the party voter file briefly before the New Hampshire primary after a Sanders staffer inappropriately accessed information.

Ray Buckley, the chairman of New Hampshire’s Democratic Party, said that he first learned of the agreement while serving as DNC vice chair in 2016. “The day that Donna discovered this, she called me and I almost passed out,” Buckley said. “We were blatantly misled.”

According to Brazile—the highly irregular agreement effectively gave Clinton’s team control of the DNC before she won the nomination. “Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff,” Brazile writes.

Brazile says she told Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s chief rival for the nomination, what she had found in a September 7th phone call.

“I explained that the cancer was that [Clinton] had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election,” she wrote, adding that she cried at the end of the call to Sanders.

In her new book Hacks, Donna Brazile — the former interim Democratic National Committee chairwoman alleges that Hillary Clinton “rigged the party’s nomination process” against populist candidate Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries.

Brazile came under fire last year after the anti-secrecy website released hacked DNC emails that revealed she had notified the Clinton campaign in advance of a question she would be asked at a town hall-style event hosted by CNN.

Brazile without question has her own misdeeds to address, as Russia-sponsored DNC email hacks revealed she shared Democratic town hall questions with the Clinton staff in advance.

The latest disclosures in the forthcoming book points to possible attempts at rehabilitating her reputation as the revelations will likely exacerbate the rifts that have formed within the Democratic Party between more moderate officeholders and the populist, pro-Bernie legions.

Mark Longabaugh, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign was quoted in the Post as saying “The idea that the DNC was willing to take a position that helped a candidate in the midst of a primary is outrageous and there is no justification for it.”

“It gets back to the fundamental way that Bernie Sanders was running his campaign, which was to break the stranglehold of big money on politics.”

Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager, said in an interview that their campaign was led to believe it had the same joint fundraising agreement as Clinton.

“We were not offered veto power on staff at the DNC, I can tell you that,” said Weaver. “This was a laundering operation. They’d go to fundraisers, they’d get a $350,000 check from donors which was supposed to be divvied up. Instead of disbursing that money, they’d turn around and run a small-dollar fundraising to generate small contributions that went to the Clinton campaign.”

President Donald Trump tweet Thursday night suggested the Justice Department should investigate the “real collusion and dishonesty,” even though Brazile and the Sanders campaign have not alleged criminal activity.

Donna Brazile just stated the DNC RIGGED the system to illegally steal the Primary from Bernie Sanders. Bought and paid for by Crooked H….

Seizing upon the rift within the Democratic party, Trump sent out a flurry of Tweets on Friday morning before embarking on a five-nation [12-day] Asia trip. The following are a few tweets in no particular order:

The rigged Dem Primary, one of the biggest political stories in years, got ZERO coverage on Fake News Network TV last night. Disgraceful!

Issues at the Democratic National Committee have reached a fever pitch as the organization struggles to gear up for the 2018 and 2020 elections. Looking ahead at the midterm elections, Democrats need to regroup and work toward presenting a united front to rebound from the 2016 rift and capitalize on viable candidates that will move the party forward.

Freedom Is A Choice! “I am grabbing God’s coattail and letting Him lead”

Freedom has a deeper meaning for those like Omar Howard. Just a little over a decade ago he was released, seemingly free from the restraints of prison. Yet, walking out of the doors he had no clue he would be entering into the harsh prison of life that follows those like him who have a record. That record makes it hard for them to have the basic level of freedom that most of us who have never been down that road take for granted. Howard is like multiple men and women who are released from jail with a plan to change but have to fight the “system”. Howard describes his “beginning” as working endless opportunities just to make ends meet and being told “no” repeatedly. It would have been easy for Howard to just go back to the life of crime. Why wouldn’t he? Why didn’t he? His response, “You have to make a conscious decision to change every day. Life is about choices, every choice leads to a destination and you have to believe God is in control”. This thought process and his tenacity led him to his current place and receiving his pardon January 2018, just a month after celebrating his ten year release.

Howard was 15 when he dropped out of school and started down a path to destruction. Hard robbery was the crime that would ultimately change his life and leave him with no choice but to accept a plea deal that resulted in an 18 year sentence from a “hit” that left a man being killed. Howard maintains his innocence in the murder and has apologized to the family for the part that he played. Although he doesn’t blame his childhood for his choices, he does state that it’s important that parent’s play an essential part in the lives of the children that you bring into this world. “Parental intimacy is important, create structure for your kids and let them know how much you love them. Fathers, be a part of your children’s lives or they will embrace their counterparts for support. Be transparent and talk to your kids about real issues.”

When asked, What would you say to your younger self? Howard responds, “Establish a relationship with God. Embrace the process, strive harder and KNOW THAT YOU HAVE A PURPOSE.” The same thoughts he now shares with the youth that are involved with his foundation “Freedom is a Choice, Inc., a mentoring program for at-risk teens. It is evident that Howard is a changed man, as a Chaplain at the Atlanta Transitional Center in midtown, he speaks hope to those who are where he once was. He is a featured speaker in the documentary “Released” When Does the Sentence End?” and most recently shared his story on Iyanla Vanzat’s “Fix My Life” show. He is a man of action and on a mission to keep as many young men from walking in his shoes by exposing them to better. He is a sought after motivational speaker and hopes to extend his program to have one of the largest faith-based youth centers very soon. It is nothing short of amazing, but his ability to serve and give makes him a blessing.

Is This Life?

Media headlines are displaying disaster all over the world with no resolve. From children being killed in innocent shootouts because of the flaws in gun laws to sexual abuse cases on the rise. Our government has gone haywire and currently dominating the spotlight while, deadly diseases and mental illnesses are being minimized. Is this life? Is this what life is becoming? Every morning we wake up to the sound of breaking news and headlines that make us cringe. Positive stories and encouraging words have become harder to find. When asking others, “How do you deal with the negative energy every day?” Some reply, “I don’t. I don’t watch the news, or I don’t listen to it.” My reply is usually this, “It isn’t just on the news. It’s walking or sitting right beside you and sometimes it’s even in your household. There are people suffering every day because of the things we don’t do, don’t want to see, or simply don’t want to get involved in.” We have been conditioned to not get in anyone else’s business unless it affects us personally. Look around you, open your eyes. It’s now affecting us all and we must do something. This is a call for action. It’s time we all unselfishly take part in rebuilding our communities. Make it your business to do something intentional every day in an effort to make a change in your community and begin to push everyone including yourself out of the comfort of just accepting what is. We are losing innocent lives every day to drug abuse, domestic violence, hunger, contaminated water and the list of disasters that are happening right under our nose increase, every second, every minute and every hour of every day.

You may be wondering what you can do to promote positive change in your community, here is a start:

Volunteer at shelters-Everyone has something they can provide-share your expertise. Help by donating your goods and knowledge.

Volunteer at schools-Teachers need more mentors and positive role models. We all have a story, share your experience and give a child a blueprint to a better life.

Spend quality time with your kids and your family- We get so caught up in life that we forget to nourish what we have already been blessed with. Take time to water the seeds you planted.

Contact your political partners and work with them on change for your community. What do you see in your area that would be an easy fix to reduce crime or poverty. Make a plan and Expose it!

There are so many things that we can do to change the direction of this world but WE must work together for the good and it doesn’t matter what religion, race or sex you are-we all have something in common. We want the best for our families. Post and share your thoughts on what you can do to expose and improve your community. Hashtag#exposuremagazine #isthislife

Cubs Sign Pitcher Yu Darvish to $126 Million Deal in Preparation for Next Title Run

Making one of the biggest splashes this off-season, the Chicago Cubs have added pitcher Yu-Darvish, formerly of the Los Angeles to their talented, but imperfect roster.

The deal for Darvish standing at $126 million also comes with an opt out clause along with performance clauses to increase the value of the deal. The Cubs had been in talks with Darvish for a good portion of the last season, but now apparently was the best time for both parties.

Despite the unceremonious ending to last season in the NLCS, the Cubs have been in a better place these past several seasons than they have been in a long while. The signing of Darvish to say the least is a very good insurance policy to sustain this run.

With names like Jon Lester and Kyle Hendricks, Darvish will complete the rotation for one of the most talented group of pitchers in baseball. However this move seems to nudge Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta who is currently a free agent to the door. Arrieta had an up and down season with flashes of greatness, but ultimately didn’t make the best case to remain with the ball club.

Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta

Darvish brings a 2.4 ERA against National League Central opponents as well as his all-time MLB leading 11 strikeouts per nine innings ratio to the Cubs which makes this the pickup many other teams are coveting right now. The Cubs begin spring training in a week and can begin integrating Darvish then in preparation for the upcoming season.